Punctuating the best statistical month by a player in Tucson Roadrunners history, the American Hockey League named forward Michael Carcone its player of the month for December.
And, naturally, Carcone wasn’t even a Roadrunner when the award was announced.
Carcone tallied 10 goals and 20 points in just 10 games for the month, marking the first time a Tucson player has earned the league’s top monthly award.
The damage to the stat rolls could have been worse, too. Carcone effectively missed Tucson’s last two games of the month after the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes called him up on Dec. 27. He proceeded to score a goal that night in his return to the big-league club.
When asked last month to explain his such an offensive run, Carcone said it’s not really a science.
“It’s such a long season,” he said in early December, the night he recorded his third hat trick as a Roadrunner. “You’re not going to play well for all 72 (games). Some nights those shots are going to get blocked. Sometimes you’re going to hit a post, or its going go in like it did tonight.
“Sometimes you have one, maybe three. Sometimes zero. Just it’s a long season and things happen. You’ve just got to stay with it and play your game and take your shots when you have them and yeah, good things happen.”
Those good things happened a lot for Carcone even outside of December. Despite him not being with the team for the last 10 days, Carcone still leads the AHL’s with 46 points in 27 games heading into this weekend’s action. That includes the Roadrunners’ Friday and Saturday home games against the Colorado Eagles.
It’s likely Carcone will be with the Coyotes for a while, if not indefinitely. His call-up coincided with an injury to Arizona forward Matias Maccelli. Last season, Maccelli turned heads in Tucson, earning league rookie of the month for February before getting an NHL shot.
New year, new opponents
With the flip of the calendar to 2023, it almost looks like a brand-new schedule for the Roadrunners (14-12-4-0), who enter their first game of 2023 in fifth place in a loaded 10-team Pacific Division.
Tucson plays 10 games at home in January ... and just two in Tucson Arena in February thanks to the club’s annual gem show road trip. Friday’s 7 p.m. game against the Eagles marks the first of eight new matchups in the month against teams Tucson hasn’t faced yet this season.
Friday and Saturday in Tucson mark the only two home games the Roadrunners will play against the Eagles, with the return trip to Loveland, Colorado scheduled for late March. That’s a far cry from recent years, when the AHL had Tucson playing Colorado as many as 12 times in a single season – a scheduling move that effectively the teams’ rivalry. New teams in the Las Vegas area and Southern California’s Palm Desert are now Tucson’s closest geographical opponents, meaning the Roadrunners and Eagles will only see each other four times this season.
Other new (for 2022-23 at least) opponents for the Roadrunners this month: Tuesday and Wednesday at home against the Milwaukee Admirals; Jan. 24 and Jan. 25 against the defending AHL Calder Cup champion Chicago Wolves in Tucson Arena; Jan. 28 and Jan. 29 against the Abbotsford Canucks, also in Tucson.
Roadrunners’ All-Star chances
The AHL is fast approaching its midseason All-Star Classic, scheduled for Feb. 5-6 at Place Bell in Laval, Quebec.
Carcone would be an obvious choice for the first all-star selection of his career, but his likely status in the NHL for the foreseeable future will mean that at least one other Roadrunner will need to be selected.
The most likely Tucson candidates are forwards Laurent Dauphin and Jean-Sébastien Dea. Dea’s 13 goals this season are a top-20 number league-wide, while Dauphin is just one behind his teammate. Both players have 27 points, though Dauphin has played 26 AHL games compared to Dea’s 30.
An all-star selection for either or both would be fitting. Dea is a native of Laval, a suburb of Montreal, and Dauphin is from Montreal itself. The pair both spent time together playing for the AHL’s Laval Rocket last season, too.
The Coyotes recalled Dauphin on New Year’s Eve, and he saw roughly 10 minutes of ice time in a pair of 5-3 Coyotes losses on Dec. 31 at Tampa Bay and Jan. 3 at Florida. Dauphin was reassigned to Tucson Wednesday.
Defenseman Cam Dineen would be another likely candidate. His 22 points in 26 games are tied for seventh league-wide among blueliners. Dineen has played 183 career games for Tucson over parts of five seasons.
The Tucson Roadrunners, the American Hockey League affiliate of the NHL's Arizona Coyotes, wore their new white 'Kachina' jerseys for the first time during their Saturday, Nov. 11 game against the San Jose Barracuda in Tucson Arena. The Coyotes' own white Kachina look, which includes green, red, purple, sand and orange accent colors, has been immensely popular among fans since it was reintroduced in recent seasons after a decade-plus hiatus. The Roadrunners, who have used a black version of the Kachina jersey as its alternate since the 2019-20 season, put their own twist on the white version, moving purple in the primary accent position. Video by Brett Fera/Arizona Daily Star
